A Butterfly's Wingbeat
by Materioptikon
Summary: Integra Hellsing once was a happy, jetsetting girl; once, she was a loving, doting mother. Then her father died, and she returned home - only to discover a legacy of hate and blood that refuses to die... AU.
1. Releasing the Seal

_Monte Carlo, Monaco. 1:30 AM, June 1st, 2023._

Monte Carlo never slept. Not that anybody wanted it to.

The European citadel of racing and gambling shone day and night with the sins of the continent's aristocracy. Rivers of gold and alcohol ran across the streets, and inside the hotels, dreams and promises were made and destroyed with an incredible alacrity. In the lounges people talked about the end of the nuclear era for Slovenia, the meaning and impact of the new Istanbul Canal, and how they were being forced to learn Chinese in order to deal with the new global balance. Without mentioning how they missed the good old days of the dollar.

Speed, excitement and change were the only true constants of the city. In the Grand Casino, several people huddled in one of the craps tables desperately threw small fortunes in chips against a smiling, thin man who kept winning. In the slots section, a slightly bitter woman poured coin after coin in her preferred slot machine while sipping from a tumbler.

Jack and Mina Sussex-Fairbrook, even by Monegasque standards, were two of the wealthiest patrons of the Grand Casino. Twin children of an industry baron and a former jet-setting member of the British nobility, each had had their own fair share of adventures. Jack was the less-inhibited of the two, often seen with a different lady every single night. It made no difference to him who they were; actresses, singers, politicians' daughters; and while legendarily hedonistic, he had a keen sense of mathematical acumen and logical thinking. Employed by a minor branch of the family business, his main ambition was to find a way to seize control of his father's empire and earn it instead of receiving it in a silver platter. He had inherited the family looks and charm, and felt no qualms about liberally using them with everybody he met.

He smiled as the dice were thrown and again Lady Luck smiled upon him. Briefly pausing to discreetly fondle his partner for the night, he leant forward to take what was his and mutter compliments, true or fake, to the other participants. It filled him with a strange delight to know he was better than them, even at a game as banal as this. He had it all - any woman he wanted, ample funds he could draw from, and slowly but surely he was worming his way into the executive branch of the family corporation. One day, he would have the world beneath him and everyone would obey.

Mina was the romantic, emotional one. While not a virgin by any standards, she was far more closed than her brother and had taken one of the family's least useful business - a near-forgotten Parisian haute couture fasino house once purchased by her mother and left to seethe in oblivion after her death - and made it work. While not yet a particularly strong voice in the fashion industry, Mina had successfully managed to pull it into a couple of important roles by sheer bull-headed stubborness. In her father's opinion, she was much like her mother, if her skin had been just a shade lighter, with a darker shade of flaxen hair. To be honest, neither of the two was yet a frequent visitor to the Grand Casino, but their father had invited them for a week to enjoy themselves away from their respective jobs.

A beep distracted her for a second from her routine. Laying down her drink as she reached for her handbag, she smiled sadly as she noted another message in her phone from one of her assistants. Another diminutive change added to the next collection. She shook her head and punched in her acknowledgement and approval. Silently, she laughed to herself as she poured more of the drink down her throat; she honestly wished the road to success wasn't as painful and tiring. On the other hand, the taste... the taste of sheer, unadulterated success when something went right for her... how wonderful it was.

Martin Sussex, on the other hand, was an older gentleman, just like they made them before the wat, the old military wolves joked, with a tall, muscular build, wrapped in a cashmere suit as he rested in one of the Casino's bars, staring into the bottom of his own tumbler, remembering his wife.

"Mister Martin Sussex? Husband of Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing?"

Sussex turned, and sighed in quiet horror as he saw a troupe of several men, each in a very expensive suit, approaching him from the salon's entrance.

"Who the hell wants to know?"

"George Starr, Foreign Office, sir. Could we leave the main lounge? We have to discuss very serious business with you wife's estate, sir."

Sussex sank his head into his hands and downed his tumbler in a single drink.

"My wife? She's... God, why do you bring this again?"

"I think you know, sir. You were warned this day might come."

"Leave my children alone. Integra died for them and now you come dragging this aberration back."

"I'm afraid we have no choice, sir. The laws explain it rather amply. Britain needs a Hellsing, _any _Hellsing, and a Hellsing is what Britain will have."

"Fuck that. Integra had it covered."

"You know what is the most interesting part of human planning, sir?"

Sussex bitterly spat on the Casino's floor and forced himself to ask:

"What, you bastard?"

Starr smiled.

"_'The best laid plans of mice and men, often go astray.' _She is an extraordinary woman, sir, I will not deny it. But it seems we managed to succeed in finding a loophole in her plans."

Sussex looked at the bottom of his tumbler. Then at Starr's quiet smile. He shrugged.

And punched Starr with enough force to knock out two teeth. He gestured to one of the men next to him.

"Fine, then. Arrest me. Arrest us. Been hiding this for how long..."

As the other men moved in to bind him with handcuffs, Sussex sighed:

"Dammit, Integra... you promised me! You promised us!"

* * *

><p>Mere minutes later, Sussex was unceremoniously escorted into an unmarked black van parked just outside the Casino, and he wearily counted the seconds before his children joined him. He did not have to wait long: less than thirty seconds after he'd taken his place, the door was flung open and his son was thrown in.<p>

"Hey! This is an outrage! I'm a British citizen, you can't do this to me! I've done nothing!"

"Jack?"

"Pop?"

"Trust me on this one. Shut the fuck up."

Ten seconds later, Mina was chucked in, and the van began moving.

"Alright. Which of you two jokers began it this time?"

The elder Sussex groaned.

"You two have no idea of how much I'd love to chalk this one up to one of you juvenile indiscretions, but I really can't. This is about something a lot more serious and difficult to explain..."

From the front of the van, a harsh, high voice asked:

"Excuse me... you mean you _never told them?_ Ha. Lady Integra's gonna love this."

"Lady Integra? Hey, what the hell are you talking about? My mother's dead, she died from childbirth!"

"Hey, Sussex, that for real? That be what you told them?"

Martin Sussex groaned in pain.

"Pop? What do they mean, and where are they taking us?"

"Your mother hated the very idea of leaving you alive. Knowing there was a good chance this would happen."

"Alright, what the fuck is going around here, Pop? First, Mother's alive, then you tell us she hated us..."

"Oh, no, no, no! She loved you with all her heart! What she didn't want to happen was this; these... _men..._ because you on the front _are _men, aren't you?"

"At the moment."

"These men are dragging us to Britain. To London."

"London? What the hell are we going to do on a nuked city?"

"London wasn't nuked."

"Okay, firebombed, same thing. Nothing's _alive_ there, Pop. London's a dead city and you know it."

"London isn't dead. In fact, you could say it's never been more prosperous. Okay, let me explain. You don't understand. Sure, there's a woman in Hellsing Manor, who once happened to give birth to you two. Every day, weekends and holidays included, she wakes up after three hours of daily sleep, washes her teeth, eats, reads the papers she's handed, breathes, moves, talks, receives her daily metabolic booster injections and sometimes cries. But if you call the existence she leads _life_, I think I'd rather shoot my brains out than _live_ like her. How long has she lived like that? _Decades_. What for? So you two wouldn't be there, shouting orders and jockeying the fate of the Empire with every choice."

The silence in the van was nearly deafening. Mina decided to take a gamble.

"Alright. Since this seems to be so bloody confusing, perhaps you can start by giving us a real explanation of what the truth's like?

"I don't know the full story, children. I just know what you mother managed to tell me and get away with. But what little I know boils down to this - I wouldn't touch the Hellsing name for the world. Sure, there's wealth and power attached, and mind you, it's a damn huge share of both, but think - nobody gives anything for nothing in this valley of tears. It's always either equal, fair trade, or one of both loses. And to take the Hellsings' legacy is to take responsibilities that go hand in hand with the money and the decrees. The ultimate double zero."

"Okay. we're making progress. Hellsing equals bad. What does that mean for us?"

"Your mother's full single name was Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing. And you were baptized as Jackson and Wilhemina Sussex-Hellsing. You're Hellsings, both of you. Old, noble blood of the old country... I'm gonna tell you of what I know about tha family of your mother. Hopefully, you will manage to find a way to cheat the reaper."

"And if we don't manage to?"

"Then one of you goes and becomes the next Master of Hellsing Manor. The Hellmouth."

* * *

><p>The family was driven to a Monegasque private runway and shunted into a Cessna light plane. The three of them were a bit confused with the shuffling, but it was obvious the plane was directed straight at the British Isles.<p>

"So... the Hellsings were really once nobles?"

"More than that. Hellsing was one of the twelve families that dominated the United Kingdom. And they were one of the strongest, despite their little actual power. Mostly because of their excellent relations to the Walsh, Penwood and Irons families. See, once there was this system called the Council of Twelve. From the twelve families, the best and brightest were selected to join into the Council. Your mother was an only child and your grandfather's ambition was to make his portfolio unnecessary so he could just hand over the entire estate in raw money and properties to your mother so she would not have to deal with power plays and power games."

"What position did Grandfather Hellsing have in this conspiracy?"

"Targeting and destroying interior threats to the United Kingdom of certain nature, initially. With time, that function widened a bit so the Hellsing Corps became a sort of secret, very discreet police, a sort of Internal Affairs for the kingdom. Alternating this with their original function, you'll understand the Hellsings wielded enormous wealth and great properties."

"Such as Hellsing Manor."

"Hellsing Manor. Ugly place, very opulent, gothic. Only went once, your mother shooed me away and gave me you two for safekeeping. Didn't want any of us near the place again. Ever. That was mere months before all of London was shot to hell."

"And what do they need us for?"

"Crux of the whole thing, Mina. There is this law, that many have tried to manipulate invarious forms, unsuccessfully, may I add, that only Hellsings have the right to command certain sections of the Hellsing Corps. Your grandfather tried to shut down that section; he died before he managed to go too far. Then the responsibility was thrown into your mother's hands; she tried to, as well, but then the London thing happened."

"And the Hellsing Corps were more necessary than ever."

"More or less. Her position became very vulnerable, though in all honesty she had no way of knowing about it; it was all very random and unexpected. See, the London attack was a madman's dream, as Integra told me. The fallout would have been _much _worse had she not decided to screw everything and order a full firebombing run. After that, her position and her leadership of the Hellsing Corps was drawn into question; she was forced into doing stuff she _really _didn't want to; she tried to leave and others _tried_ to force her to leave, but the laws, the laws, meant she couldn't be removed from power just like that. Britain needs a Hellsing, and it's a Hellsing they'll get, even if they have to get one of you two for that."

* * *

><p>The Cessna aircraft landed with a dull thud. All three prisoners were unceremoniously escorted outside.<p>

Martin Sussex huffed in repressed rage. Hellsing Manor was still as horrible after all those years.

The Gothic manor loomed before him, impassible and unchanging. Four squadrons of Hellsing Infantry Corps, two of Hellsing Special Operations and the full Hellsing Special Weapons Regiment stood in formation before them.

Three solitary, silent figures awaited in the lintel of the door. A tall, swarthy man in a full black suit he vaguely remembered from his previous visit. A young, strawberry blonde woman in secretarial attire. A bowing, young male in black clothes. The main service staff. Martin remembered two of them. This did not bode well. Especially since they seemed to have berely changed since his last visit twenty-three years previously.

The single woman of the tree broke ranks and walked to meet them. Bowing lightly, she said:

"Jackson and Wilhemina Sussex-Hellsing? I am Seras Victoria, your mother's secretary. This is Walter C. Dornez, family retainer. This gentleman is your servant. Welcome to Hellsing Manor. "

* * *

><p>In a pristine white hospital room, a heavily bandaged figure, connected to machine after machine, lightly writhed under the cool air of the room.<p>

Her single open blue eye shod tear after tear. She had failed everybody.

And she knew what came next.


	2. Revealing the Truth

The hallways at Hellsing Manor, contrary to Sussex's own expectations, were flooded with light. The dark blue curtains, embroidered with the Hellsing coat of arms, were wide open, allowing the French windows to let in as much sunlight as possible. The mansion's exquisite panelling, with the opulent chandeliers, the lavish Turkish tapestries and the occasional trophy elaborately set on an ebony base completed the ensemble. Sussex snorted when that, at his side, he realized his children had been mostly silent as they were led to the administrative wing of the compound and realized the probable cause: the Hellsing squadrons had finally broken from their staunch formations and begun flooding the adjacent buildings, all of them more obviously geared towards military purposes. Barracks. Shooting galleries. Training grounds. And the sounds of shots being fired filled the air.

"Ignore the shots, please. The training for the squadron should be done within two hours."

And the girl. He remembered her, even if she wasn't as likely to remember him. Once, she had come to Integra and him, one of the last times he had ever seen her. Integra had already been a bloody mess, the woman she had once been long since crumbled. The girl had come and had collected Integra, guiding her carefully into a massive limousine over her weak protests. He had tried to intervene, but somebody had swiftly knocked him out and left him in the Claridge's lobby with a plane ticket to Madrid and an apology note from Integra, beseeching him never to again try to find her, and warning him against the dangers his children might face.

The office section was slightly more spartan in its decorations than the rest of the manor, and Sussex bitterly noted several portraits hanging on the walls meant Integra had not totally lost her desire to express herself with her art. Little as the detail had been, Martin Sussex was left quietly horrified that his wife had lasted for so long like a butterfly stuck with a needle on a wall.

At long last, the huge double doors leading to the office of the compound's leader were swung open. Three wide grandfather chairs had been set around a round table full of documents and books, and a projector had been prepared on the office's desk with a proper screen at a side.

_Ye gods. I am in Integra's office. I am closer to her than I have been in more than twenty years. And all I can think is how oppresive the air is here. How much it reeks of... cigars. Dear God, cigars.  
><em>

"How heavily does she smoke?"

The secretary was stunned for a second by the unexpected question.

"Excuse me?"

"My wife. How heavily does she smoke and what kind of tobacco?"

The strange, red-eyed butler intervened:

"She smokes Cuban cigarinos, or occasionally Henry Winterman cigars. At least two, no more than four daily."

Martin Sussex sank in quiet horror into the grandfather chair and stared at the office. More trophies. Bookcases full of alchemical treatises and lengthy tomes on the spiritual and the supernatural. Awards. Ceremonial swords, hanging from an ebony shield upon the wall. A memory from a decorated ancestor, he hoped. An ivory cigarette holder on a heavy cut glass ashtray. Old-fashioned fountain pens. Black curtains contrasting heavily with the light filtering into the office. Morning dust. A chimney with some iron implements nearby.

"She didn't smoke, y'know. She _hated_ tobacco smoke. Cigars with a special kind of rabidness."

"People change, Sussex."

The elder man shot a dirty look to the tall man in the black suit and quietly, bitterly, chuckled to himself.

"All right. You got us where you want us. So begin talking, man. I've been waiting for my lawfully wedded wife to die for twenty-three years to die in peace and quiet so my children would not follow on her footsteps. What happened?"

The swarthy man spat on the ashtray.

"She managed to find a way to _almost_ kill herself with a sheet of paper. She used it to release the latches on her windowsill and throw herself out of a fifth story."

"She always had good hands. She still any good with her sleight of hand? She loved swiping my tie."

"Illusions. Deceptions. That's what we are here to dispel. So we begin."

The man opened one of the large books on the table.

"Any of you two read _Dracula_?"

The twins exchanged looks.

"Both of us have. As a required school lecture."

The man groaned.

"We work with what we have. Let us begin with one of your ancestors, a Flemish botanist and mystic. Abraham Van Helsing."

* * *

><p>Walter had removed himself from the meeting. Seras and Alucard could handle themselves. Until the round of hard questions began. Such as why there was a latch in her windowsill she could not have had opened freely, by herself. Or why she wanted to die in any way possible.<p>

The truth was, it hadn't been the only suicide attempt in recent years. It had merely been the most successful one.

She had tried to kill herself exactly nine times before. Once by drowning in her bathtub, once by slashing her femoral arteries with a letter opener, twice by poisoning, twice by suffocation, and thrice by assorted methods of varied ingenuity. Each time, her security had been tightened, and each time she waited patiently until it was ever so slightly relaxed until she tried again. The paper sheet trick had been a true stroke of luck, as she had successfully bluffed one of the two guards into leaving the room for a package of letters she had in her office, and tricked the another one into approaching so she could cuff him with his own handcuffs to the bedpost and knocking him unconscious, while she took what had until then seemed like an innocent origami piece and unlatched the window, throwing herself moments after it was swung open.

Had Alucard not realized what had happened and had he not returned earlier than expected, she would have hit the pavement below instead of shadow matter and it would all have ended.

Walter sighed. He shared a tiny, little secret with Seras and Alucard he honestly hoped he never had to reveal to the twins.

He ached with them a fervent wish to, one day, find a way to kill Integra Hellsing. Failing that, finding a way to let her die came to mind.

* * *

><p>"Abraham Van Helsing was a rather fervent believer in Protestantism. As such, he had certain ideals. The whole plot of Dracula is... somewhat fictionalized. The whole point is, Abraham Van Helsing really did exist and had a hand in the capture of an independent enemy agent. Instead of quickly killing him, he chose to instead seize the opportunity and forcefully convert this agent so he could lead him to more of his kind and to use his talents for killing in order to support the Empire. Even in the last days of the Victorian era, this was seen as... an opportunity nobody could refuse. This individual had certain techniques or talents that could be passed on under certain circumstances, though due to the origin of these skills, society at large saw, and probably would still see, those talents as blasphemous or disgusting, while still secretly lusting for them."<p>

Jack rose from his seat and swatted several books and papers out of the table, screeching in rage.

"What kind of talents? I'm gonna cut to the chase here. You guys lifted us from Monte, where I was getting a splendid stroke of luck, and bring us here. Good ol' John Bull England! Long live the Empire and the Queen! Oh, but now we're here, it's all cloak and dagger! What are we supposed to think? What skills are you talking about? We are not like you, people! I, for one, am totally fed up with what you're selling here! _We're not Hellsings, and we will never be, dammit!"_

The man sadly arched an eyebrow.

"What is learned cannot be unlearned. Are you willing to pay the price?"

"Cut the crap and give me a reason why should I be here instead of Monte."

The man raised a hand.

"Police Girl, if you please...?"

The secretary nodded politely, if also with a bit of sadness. She walked over to the chimney and drew an iron power out of the implement basket nearby. Martin Sussex whimpered in fear and covered his eyes. Mina took her hands to her mouth. Jack said nothing at all.

With a swing, the girl entered an attack position, holding back the poker as if it were a sword. She narrowed her eyes for a second as the older man approached her and extended his arms against the sunlight. She needed no more time.

"Watch. And learn."

The girl struck forward.

The iron poker was certainly not an ideal weapon. The ceremonial blades would have been much better; on the other hand, they lacked the sheer brutality of the poker. The impromptu weapon pierced the man's chest in the exact location of the heart, passed through it and the left lung, and pierced the man's suit to surface on the another end. Shining red blood began dropping from the poker's sharp endand around its length. Jack dropped his jaw in horror, and Mina's eyes were covered in tears. Martin Sussex quietly moaned to himself as the lesson he had learnt in Camden again shone into his mind. The man did not move at all. The young woman, as calmly as she could, thrust her arm again to retrieve the hilt of the poker, only to be waved away by the man himself.

"It's a trick. It's a trick."

Bitterly, the man seized the hilt of the poker and pulled it out, causing another small fount of blood to splash over the table and into the table.

"Like Thomas, you will not believe, until you have touched the wound, will you?"

The man gently took Jack's hand and guided it to the fresh stab, blood still flowing. Jack stifled a cry as he was forced to push a finger into the wound. He then shut his eyes and ceased to struggle. Reality meant nothing to him in that brief instant. The man softly pushed him backwards, allowing him to be seated as he lost aside the unconscious Hellsing heir, the monster offered his hand to Mina. Their eyes met, the deep red pools meeting the tear-soaked eyes of Wilhemina Hellsing. She uncomfortably recoiled, shifting in quiet horror in her seat, trying to make more distance between her and the being offering her something that looked like a hand.

"I... no. Please don't. I believe. I believe. You don't have to, I believe. I believe."

The thing clasped her hand and bowed to her. The rivulets of blood changed course, and returned faithfully to the inside of the monster's body. Strands of red and black congealed in a mass of writhing energy into the wound as the fissure closed and nothing remained of it, nor in the thing's body or its clothes.

"You have seen the truth. And now I warn you... this may well be your life. The life of fighting, knowing this is what truly lies in the horrors of the night. Knowing you will have to sacrifice everything you know to protect others, throwing yourself at the madness so others will not even know of the mindless evils that lie beneath the comforting light they love."

Mina then started shaking truly violently, pushing him away as she desperately tried to steady herself with the table as she walked up to her father.

"Father. Fa... Father. I need... I need the truth. More than I've... already learnt. Tell me. Tell me."

She kneeled before Martin Sussex and cupped his chin.

"Is this what Mother has been... all these years?"

Father and daughter looked at each other for the briefest of instances, each fighting to look past the veil of tears, ignoring everything around them. And the man finally collapsed and let his sorrow run free. He pushed past his daughter, shutting his eyes in rage and fear, seized the discarded poker, and raised it at the monster's eyes.

"Your kind killed my wife!"

Bitterly, the thing raised its shoulders.

"Trite. And unless a miracle happens, they will kill your children."

Sussex swung the poker at the head of the infernal being. Effortlessly, he caught the metal bar before it made contact.

"Sussex. We are here to find that miracle. Help us now, or see your children wither as Integra Hellsing did."

The poker fell to the carpeted floor with a dull thud. Sussex desperately turned to his children, and pulled them as hard as he could into his fold.

* * *

><p>Outside, later that day, Walter was quietly smoking a thin cigarette in one of the many shadowed spots in Hellsing Manor.<p>

"Sussex is gonna be pissed if he hears you introduced Her Ladyship to the joys of smoking."

Wryly smiling, Walter hissed as a breeze of wind put off his cigarette. Annoyed, he reached for his vest pocket and withdrew a compact, thin Zippo lighter. With hardly a press, the small flame spouted into being, and was promptly offered to Seras to light her own cigarette.

"They have bigger things to worry about now that Alucard decided to show them the family business' ropes in his own inimitable way. How long does the period of grace for compassion last?"

Handing him back the lighter as she puffed, Seras Victoria groaned:

"We have less than a week to find Master's miracle. I propose we hand them Her Ladyship's original diaries to them to see if they can find something useful as we find a way to kill her."


End file.
